For many years detergent compositions have contained chelating agents and/or bleaching agents for removal of pigment stains such as tea, coffee, wine and fruit stains on household laundry.
Chelants react with the heavy metals present in such stains, thereby providing stain removal performance benefits by extraction of the metal ions from the stains.
Phosphorus-containing compounds have proven to be very useful as chelating agents. However, there is a growing concern regarding the use of phosphorus-containing compounds in detergent compositions because such compounds lead to the eutrophication of lakes and streams. This has urged the detergent formulator to restrict the phosphorus content of detergent compositions, necessitating the formulation of laundry detergents containing chelants less effective than the conventionally-used phosphonates or poly-phosphonates. These requirements have complicated the formulation of effective detergent compositions in terms of cleaning efficiency in general and stain removal in particular. It would, therefore, be highly desirable to be able to formulate detergent compositions which include reduced levels of phosphorous-containing components, but which still exhibit excellent cleaning and stain removal performance. It has now been found that certain polyamine-N-oxide polymers are very efficient in removing pigment stains. This finding allows to formulate detergent compositions exhibiting excellent cleaning and stain removal performance.